The Treaty of London establishes the Council of Europe in Strasbourg as the first European institution working for European integration.

Council of Europe

The treaty was signed on May 5, 1949, and create the Council of Europe. The original signatories were Belgium, Denmark, France, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and United Kingdom. It is currently referred to as the Statute of the Council of Europe.

The Council of Europe is the oldest international organisation working towards European integration, having been founded in 1949. It has a particular emphasis on legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation. It has 47 member states with some 800 million citizens. Read More…

Greece has formally asked for rescue loans by the European Union and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to be activated, aimed at helping the country recover from an economic crisis.

Under the plan, countries in the Eurozone will provide up to 30 billion euros in loans in the first year, while the IMF will contribute ten billion euros.

“The moment has come,” said Greek prime minister George Papandreou. He stated that it is “a national and pressing necessity for us to formally ask our partners for the activation of the support mechanism, which we jointly created in the European Union.” The prime minister added that “several days will pass before money can start being drawn.” Read More…

The Treaty of Accession was signed in Athens, admitting ten new member states, including several countries of the former Eastern Bloc, into the European Union.

Newly countries in light green

The Treaty was the agreement between the European Union and ten countries (Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia), concerning these countries accession into the EU.

At the same time it changed a number of points which were originally laid down in the Treaty of Nice. Read More…

President Barack Obama open the 47-nation Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. The president says he wants new commitments to secure weapons-grade plutonium and uranium to prevent nuclear terrorism.

With concerns about the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea a major backdrop to the conference, this is the biggest U.S.-sponsored gathering of world leaders in more than 60 years.

The New START treaty was signed on April 8, 2010 in Prague by U.S. President Obama and Russian President Medvedev and Iran will hold the Tehran International Conference on Disarmament and Non- Proliferation, 2010, announced on April 4, 2010 and to be held April 17–18, 2010.

The Summit is the largest gathering of heads of state called by a United States president since the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization. Delegations from forty-six governments plus the United States are attending, thirty-eight of which are represented by heads of state or government. Read More…

The sixteen nations in the eurozone have offered to give Greece thirty billion euro in emergency loans for the debt-stricken country, should the latter want it.

The loans’ price will be determined using formulas by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and will be set at around five percent.

The Luxembourgish prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, speaking on behalf of eurozone finance ministers, commented that “[t]he total amount put up by the eurozone member states for the first year will reach 30bn euros.” He added that “[t]his is certainly no subsidy” to Greece. Read More…

The European Union has announced that it will send a police force consisting of up to 350 officers to Haiti, following the recent magnitude 7.0 earthquake there, which is thought to have killed up to 200,000 people and left 1.5 million without homes.

“There is an agreement on a collective contribution of gendarmes,” said a European diplomat to the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency.

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, commented: “All the countries which form part of the European police force are willing to participate; France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Romania, are ready to offer personnel, each according to its capabilities. Together we will represent the EU in this role of guaranteeing the security and above all the arrival of the emergency aid which the Haitians’ need.” Read More…